


Faith

by the__magpie



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Medieval, I guess..., M/M, never really specify if it's medieval or whatever, some sort of AU at least
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-02
Updated: 2015-04-02
Packaged: 2018-03-20 20:32:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3663990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the__magpie/pseuds/the__magpie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel has one job: to bring the traitor Dean Winchester to the castle where he will be punished for his crimes. But along the way, Castiel begins to have doubts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Faith

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by my getting very emotional rewatching the season 4 finale.

The prisoner would not shut up.

Castiel had tried everything. He had ordered, threatened, asked politely – he had even tried gagging him, but the man had just hummed loudly and unintelligibly until Castiel removed the gag. No matter what he did, the man would not stop prattling on. Now, Castiel was simply ignoring him, hoping that the prisoner would get bored and be quiet at last.

 _Just two more days,_ Castiel reminded himself. Surely the prisoner would run out of things to talk about by then. Two more days until they reached the castle and Castiel never had to see Dean Winchester’s sorry face again.

Now the man was going on about how one of the clouds overhead looked vaguely like a lizard he had once caught with his bare hands. Castiel had no idea how he kept finding new things to talk about. He had commented on everything that they passed by, even the smallest boulders and hills and tufts of grass. Even a ladybug he noticed on a blade of grass at one point had warranted mention and a lengthy anecdote.

Castiel knew that the prisoner was just doing it to get a rise out of him, as if just by being unendurably annoying, Castiel would let him go. But that would never happen. Castiel was a good soldier, and this Winchester was a dangerous criminal. It had taken years to track him down and capture him. Still, it had only been a few hours since they left the fortress where he had been held, and already Castiel felt as if he was going insane.

“What do you think of the color blue?” the prisoner mused. “Everyone says it’s a sad color, but no one complains when the sky is blue. Personally, I think it can be a nice color. Not when it’s too bright, then it just hurts your eyes, you know? And when it’s too light it just looks washed out. Although I think my mother’s eyes were light blue. Anyways, the blue I like is that color you get when you look into deep water and you can the light bending in the waves…”

Castiel sighed, tuning out the prisoner’s waxing poetry about the color blue. If only they had been allowed to take horses; their traveling time would have been halved. But no. “Humility, Castiel,” his superior, Raphael, had told him when he asked this. “You must use the feet you were given.” So now Castiel was stuck with the most talkative criminal in the kingdom for another two days. This was going to be a long journey. 

* * *

It was dark when they finally stopped for the night, and the prisoner still had not stopped talking. Castiel had survived by walking ten paces in front of him and focusing on taking in the scenery instead of listening. At least he would know immediately if the prisoner tried to make a break for it.

Castiel stopped them in a small grove of trees near a creek. Right away, he chained the prisoner to one of the thin birch trees and tucked the key into his inside pocket. There was a moment when the man ceased his endless talking, and Castiel hoped that he would finally be quiet for the night.

Then, while Castiel was gathering wood to build a fire, the prisoner said, “I feel like I should at least know the name of my executioner.”

Castiel paused. “I’m not your executioner.”

“Aha!” the prisoner exclaimed. “He speaks!”

“Of course I speak,” Castiel said irritably. “As do you, as I’ve happened to notice.”

The prisoner threw his head back and laughed, while Castiel found somewhat unnerving. “A sense of humor, too!”

“Somehow, I’m not finding it as humorous as you,” Castiel muttered.

“What’s your name, then?” the prisoner grinned.

Castiel hesitated. “I am Castiel,” he said at last.

“Castiel?” the man repeated. “What the hell kind of a name is that?”

Castiel frowned. “That is my name.”

“Alright, then, ‘Castiel.’” He clearly would have put air quotes around the name if his hands were free. “What’s your last name?”

“Soldiers of the King have no last name,” Castiel said. “We belong to the garrison alone; we have no family ties.”

“Well, that’s extremely messed up,” the man muttered. “You don’t have any family at all?”

“My garrison is my family,” Castiel said. It was the only family he had ever known.

“Man, no wonder you kingsmen are so crazy,” the prisoner said, almost wonderingly. “And you think _we’re_ the barbarians!”

“Watch your tongue,” Castiel said sharply. “You are talking about your king.”

“He’s not my king, after everything he’s done,” the man snorted.

“At least he didn’t commit treason against his own people,” Castiel shot back.

“Hey!” the man barked, sitting up straighter now, hands balled into fists, real anger burning behind his eyes. “What I do helps people! _Real_ people, families – not mindless, factory made soldiers like you!”

“I am a soldier of the King!” Castiel hissed, reaching for the handle of his sword at his side. “You should show me some respect!”

For the first time, the prisoner didn’t answer back, instead clenching his jaw and glaring at Castiel as if he could cause him physical harm through the intensity of his gaze. Castiel glared back, unyielding.

Finally, the man spoke again. “It won’t do either of us any good for you to kill me here.”

Slowly, Castiel let go of his sword handle. He nodded stiffly. “The jailers will do that for me when we get to the castle.”

The man seemed to tense slightly. “Is that my fate then? The noose?”

“Most likely,” Castiel said. “That is the punishment for treason, and yours is of the highest order. I shouldn’t be surprised if you’re tortured for information on your associates as well.”

“I won’t tell them anything,” he said immediately. “They can torture me all they want, but I won’t give them any information. Besides, without me, the rebellion movement is dead. I was the leader, and they won’t be able to go on without me.”

“We both know that’s not true,” Castiel said. “These movements always have a way of sparking up again, even when you cut off the head. We know already that your brother is involved in it, as well as many of your friends from your old village. We’ll find them too, and we’ll put an end to this.”

The prisoner gritted his teeth, pulling at his chains as if his hands were itching to wrap themselves around Castiel’s throat. His voice was low but full of fury. “Don’t you dare go near them,” he growled. “If you touch them, if you harm one hair on their heads, I swear I will find a way to come back and haunt you and make your life a living hell. I swear it!”

“This is what happens when you go against the King, Dean Winchester,” Castiel said, turning away. “I don’t wish for more death, but you only have yourselves to blame.”

The prisoner was silent, and Castiel went to work on building the fire, glad that his words finally seemed to be sinking in. Neither of them spoke for the rest of the night.

* * *

In the morning, when they resumed their journey, the prisoner still wouldn’t talk. At first, Castiel thought that this was because he had taken Castiel’s words from the night before to heart, but then he noticed the hostile looks the prisoner kept shooting Castiel’s way. Obviously, the silence was more out of contempt than respect. Still, Castiel decided that it was miles better than the endless chatter from yesterday. Contempt he could take.

Because of the prisoner’s silence, and because they had left the open plains of the southern region of the kingdom for the more heavily wooded northern region, Castiel had to walk nearer to the prisoner. The man’s hands were cuffed, but it would not be impossible for him to make a run for it and lose himself among the trees. It would certainly not be the first time he had done this. Castiel would not let himself be blamed for letting this man escape the King’s grasp yet again; Zachariah had done that once, and nobody had heard from him since.

Yet it was easy to look at Dean Winchester and forget who he was. With his delicate features and clear green eyes, he seemed almost too _pretty_ to be common, let alone a rebel leader who was wanted dead or alive by the King. He looked more like a prince than a revolutionary. Even now, cuffed and angry, he hardly looked like the dangerous criminal that Castiel had heard countless stories about.

“Why do you care so much?” Castiel asked out of the blue. The prisoner looked startled for a moment to hear him speak, but he quickly returned to his stoic blank face.

Wondering if he hadn’t understood the question, Castiel asked again, “Why do you care about the rebellion?”

The prisoner looked off into the trees. “I thought you didn’t want me to talk.”

“You may speak now. It’s your ceaseless prattle that I can’t stand.”

The man snorted but didn’t say anything.

Castiel tried again. “You’ve left your friends and family behind, and once you’re dead you won’t ever see them again. Why do you care if they’re found as well?”

Shaking his head disbelievingly, the prisoner turned to look at him. “You don’t know the first thing about family, do you?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Castiel frowned.

“I don’t care if you torture me for years,” the prisoner told him. “I will never, _ever_ give you any information about the people I love. Because you don’t give up on family, even if your own head is on the chopping block.”

“But I don’t understand,” Castiel persisted. “Why are you willing to give your life to something that is so doomed to failure? Surely you must know that your rebellion could never have been successful against the power of the King.”

The prisoner stopped walking, forcing Castiel to stop as well and turn to face him. “Because it’s right,” the prisoner said, a fierce edge to his voice. “There are people there whose lives are better because of what we do! While you and your soldier friends go around robbing people and tearing families apart in the name of the King, we _help_ them!”

“That’s not true,” Castiel muttered, avoiding the man’s accusatory glare. “We don’t do that.”

“Don’t pretend you haven’t seen it, haven’t done it yourself!” he spat. “I’ve seen the King’s soldiers tear children from their mothers’ arms to work off their families debts. I’ve seen them hang men for stealing a single loaf of bread. I’ve seen them tear houses apart to find something of value to take when a family can’t pay their taxes. You can’t tell me that that’s right, that it’s justified because it’s the King’s work!”

Castiel shook his head hard. “That’s not…we’re not…”

“Oh, stop trying to come up with some lame-ass excuse,” the man said heatedly. “It’s _wrong_ , Castiel, and you know it.”

At the sound of his name, Castiel looked up to meet the man’s burning eyes. “I only do what I’m told to do,” he said quietly.

“And don’t you get it?” the man said. “That’s exactly how you let these things happen. You sit by and try not to think about it and hope that somebody else deals with it because you don’t want to trouble yourself. But while you’re sitting all cozy in your castle, there are people out there suffering.”

Castiel pressed his lips together, his head reeling. None of this was true; the prisoner was spinning lie after lie to try to make Castiel weak. _You are a soldier_ , he reminded himself. He took a step toward the man. “And you think that _you’re_ the one to save them?” he gritted out. “You are one man. You are weak. There is nothing you or anyone can do. Don’t you see? It’s hopeless. Against the King, there is no fight, there is only surrender.”

“Bullshit!” the prisoner shouted. “There is always a fight as long as someone has the courage to stand up against him! Even when I’m gone there will still be others who do the same. We know that there’s still hope, as long as we don’t follow orders like a mindless attack dog.”

“I see what you’re trying to do,” Castiel growled. “You want to plant seeds of doubt in my mind so I let you go, and then you can kill me and go back to causing chaos. It’s not going to work! I am a soldier, and I will stay loyal to my king!”

The man’s jaw clenched. “You soulless coward. What do you know of loyalty?”

Castiel swung, punching the prisoner across the face with all his might. Pain burst in his knuckles, but he hardly felt it as the man went reeling backwards, his heel catching on a fallen branch, sending him tumbling to the ground without his hands to break his fall.

“Watch your tongue,” Castiel hissed. “Or it will be my blade next time.”

The man glared up at him over the red welt rising on his cheek, but said nothing.

* * *

 Silence reigned for a long time after that. At first, Castiel walked level with the prisoner, but the man kept glaring at him, his eyes burning and furious, the welt on his cheek quickly turning into a bruise. Eventually, Castiel couldn’t stand the heat of those eyes, so he walked ahead, feeling the man’s glare boring into the back of his cloak. _If looks could kill_ , Castiel thought, _I would be dead a thousand times over._

He tried to push it away, but the man’s words kept coming back to him. Castiel had never seen the things the man had described – children taken away from families, thieves hanged for trivial crimes – so the prisoner could easily be making it all up. And yet…he knew that many of the soldiers would be capable of these things. Thinking of Raphael’s cold eyes and Michael’s serious, unsmiling face, he had no doubt that they would do these things if asked. Raphael looked down on everyone around him, even those that were supposed to be his family.

_“You don’t know the first thing about family, do you?”_

Castiel shook his head. Of course he knew what family was; the soldiers of the garrison were his brothers and sisters, if not by blood, then at least by duty. Still, the family that the prisoner had talked about...that was something that Castiel didn’t understand. Why give your life for someone who was doomed anyway? These things were foreign to Castiel – loyalty, diligence, love.

Did he love his garrison, his king? Or was he bound to them simply because they were all he knew?

“No,” he said out loud, firmly. He loved his king, and he was loyal to him. The prisoner could talk all he wanted but he would not poison Castiel’s mind.

* * *

By the time they stopped for the night, the prisoner hadn’t spoken since their conversation earlier in the day. Castiel found that he much preferred this – he didn’t like questioning himself, and every time the man spoke, he seemed to do it more and more. He had succeeded in pushing his treasonous thoughts aside and was thinking about the hearty feast they would throw and the praise he would get when they returned to the castle. The soldiers might get a night off to celebrate the fall of the rebellion. Maybe Raphael would finally recognize what a good soldier Castiel was and promote him. While he toasted a slice of bread for himself over the fire he had built, Castiel imagined the King himself seeking him out to congratulate him on a job well done.

“They’ll die, you know.”

Castiel almost dropped the bread into the flames as the sound of the prisoner’s voice behind him dragged him from his fantasy. He threw an annoyed glance over his shoulder, where the prisoner was chained to a tree once again. “What are you talking about?”

“My family. My friends. If you bring me to the castle, they’ll all die.”

“There’s no ‘if’ involved,” Castiel said stiffly. “I’m bringing you there, no questions asked.”

“My brother Sam is only eighteen,” the man said. “Just a kid. He’s all the family I’ve got, really, by blood at least. He still looks at my like I’m the goddamn sun. It broke my heart to let him get involved in this rebellion, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer, and now look where it’s gotten us.”

Castiel realized that he was gripping his toasted bread so tightly that it was being reduced to crumbs. “Stop talking.”

“Why? Having second thoughts?”

Castiel spun around and pointed a finger menacingly at the prisoner. “I don’t care what happens to you or your family, but if you don’t stop talking, I’ll resort to force.”

The man stared at him, sticking out his chin stubbornly. “Bobby is practically my dad. He just about raised Sam and me. Grumpy as a cat woken from a nap, but a bigger heart than anyone I’ve ever seen. Then there’s Ellen and Jo—”

“Stop it!” Castiel shouted.

“—practically family too,” the man went on, raising his voice as well. “Jo might as well be my sister, but don’t ever tell her that or she’ll get a swelled head. Garth is a big hugger—”

Castiel jumped to his feet. “Stop talking!”

“—and Kevin is one of the smartest kids I know, almost as smart as Sam—”

Castiel’s sword was in his hand. “I command you to stop talking!”

“—Charlie’s a genius too, helped us get the fairies on our side last year—”

“SHUT UP,” Castiel roared, slashing the air on front of the prisoner’s face with his sword.

“Why?” the man bellowed back. “Can’t bear to hear about all the people whose deaths you’ll be responsible for? Because there’s more – so many more! Wanna hear about them too?”

Castiel didn’t realize that he was shaking until the sword fell from his fingers. “No…no…just stop. Please.”

“I’ll stop when you realize the mistake you’re making! There are so many people whose lives are riding on the choice you make.”

“There is no choice to be made,” Castiel said quietly.

“There’s _always_ a choice!” the man said vehemently.

“No!” Castiel exclaimed. “There was never a choice here! If I let you go, they would kill me. Then they would hunt you down and kill you too. The only thing I can do is obey.”

“If there is anything worth dying for, this is it,” the man hissed, leaning forward. “You know that what they do is wrong. You have doubts. I can see it in your eyes, Castiel.”

Castiel quickly looked away. “You’re wrong,” he said, but his voice shook.

The man shook his head slowly, disgust in his voice. “I should’ve known…you’re just like the rest. Coward.”

Castiel turned away from him, toward the fire, and didn’t respond.

* * *

Only a few hours had gone passed when Castiel was woken by the sound of a distant howl. Instantly wide awake, he sat up, his hand flying to the hilt of his sword lying beside him. The night was black and the fire was down to its embers, but he could see the prisoner’s eyes glint in the dim light it cast.

“What was that?” Castiel whispered.

“Sounded like wolves to me,” the man whispered back.

“ _Wolves?_ ” Castiel repeated.

“Shh. Listen.”

Castiel strained his ears, and a moment later, he heard the howl again; still far away, off to the east.

“A pack,” the prisoner said grimly. “Coming this way, I’d guess.”

“Why do you say that?”

“The smell,” he said, nodding toward the remains of the rabbit Castiel caught and cooked for their dinner. “They want some too.”

Castiel was on his feet in an instant, sword in hand. “Will they attack us?”

“If they’re hungry enough.”

“How many, do you think?”

“Hard to say,” the prisoner said. “Could be two. Could be twenty.”

“Alright,” Castiel said, now pacing in a tight circle. “Okay. I can fight them off. I’m trained. I’m one of the best fighters in the garrison. I can do this.”

“Alone?” the prisoner said skeptically.

“Of course alone,” Castiel snapped. “You think I’d let you fight?”

“What, you’re just going to leave me chained up and helpless to become wolf meat?” the prisoner demanded, rattling the chains around his wrists.

“It’s my duty to bring you to the castle in one piece, and I will do that,” Castiel said. “If I go down, we both go down.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” the man hissed. “You can’t fight them all by yourself! If you let me fight, we’ll both have a better chance of surviving.”

“I know what you’re doing, and it won’t work!” Castiel shouted, pointing his sword at the man. “I won’t let you trick me into freeing you!”

Another howl sounded, much closer this time, and they both jumped.

“This isn’t a trick, I swear!” the prisoner exclaimed. “It’s basic survival! I’ve fought wolves before; I know how to do this and live to see tomorrow. But if you try to fight them alone, we’ll both die.”

“I will not betray my king,” Castiel murmured.

“I’m not asking you to,” the man said, his eyes wide and imploring. “I’m just asking you to trust me.”

“Trust you?” Castiel repeated scathingly. “After what you’ve done?”

“ _Yes_ ,” the man said resolutely. “You know that what I’ve done, what I’ve _always_ done, is help people. Please, Castiel, let me help you save our lives. Just trust me for a few minutes.”

Castiel stared at him for a long time, his hand gripping his sword too tightly, his mind reeling. Part of him screamed _“don’t trust him”_ but another, deeper part of him whispered _“he’s telling the truth.”_ Castiel had always been able to trust his instincts before; what was it about this man that made him question himself so much?

The sound of a howl rang out, closer than ever, and Castiel made up his mind in a split second. Fumbling in his pocket for the key, he strode forward and knelt beside the prisoner. In a few moments, the shackles were on the ground and the prisoner was rubbing his wrists, staring at Castiel with a kind of astonishment.

“If you make one wrong move, I will not hesitate to kill you,” Castiel said. The man nodded quickly. Castiel drew a short hunting knife from his belt and held it out, hilt first, to the man.

“We need wood,” the man said, his hand closing around the knife.

“What?” Castiel said, blinking.

“For the fire.” The man was already on his feet, running around their little clearing and gathering up all the wood on the ground. “We need to make it as big as we can. Come on, help me!”

Castiel immediately joined him, picking up everything from the smallest twigs to fallen limbs and stacking them beside the low burning fire. The man gathered up the remains of the rabbit and threw them into the trees. Meanwhile, Castiel stared piling kindling onto the embers, trying to coax up a flame.

“Let me,” the man said after a few seconds of Castiel’s failed attempts. He knelt beside the fire – it was clear that he had done this many times before – and within moments, there were bright flames climbing higher and higher.

The two of them set to work building it up, until the flames reached almost as tall as they stood, illuminating the clearing and the trees around them. Castiel could feel sweat pricking his skin, both from fear and from the heat of the fire.

“12 o’clock,” the man said warningly, nodding into the trees. Castiel saw the glint of eyes and the shape of a shadow before it disappeared into foliage without a sound. He scrambled to pick up his sword, which he had dropped while building the fire, and held it out in front of him, straining his eyes to see into the gloom beyond the firelight.

The man was counting quietly. “Three, four…six…”

“Where?” Castiel whispered.

“Look around.”

Castiel glanced around the clearing, now noticing pairs of eyes glinting at him through the darkness. He felt his blood run cold.

“They shouldn’t come into the firelight,” the man murmured.

“And if they do?”

“We’ll fight, of course.” The man’s voice sounded calm, but he was gripping the knife tight enough to turn his knuckles white.

“Of course,” Castiel echoed. He felt himself drawing closer to the man, under the odd impression that they were safer close together. He watched the pair of eyes directly in front of him; they never blinked once. “How many of them are there?”

“At least eight.”

“That’s not so bad,” Castiel muttered, trying to convince himself that this was true.

“Right,” the man said. For some reason, he was grinning. “We can take ‘em, easy. Soldier of the King and convicted criminal. We make a pretty good team.”

The absurdity of the situation almost made Castiel laugh. His amusement died instantly, though, when the pair of eyes in front of him blinked and disappeared. “Where’d it go?”

“They’re all gone,” the man said, looking around the clearing. “Where are they?”

“Did we frighten them off?” Castiel said tentatively.

“Could be,” the man said uncertainly, frowning over Castiel’s shoulder. Suddenly his eyes widened. “Cas, look out—”

Before Castiel could move, something hit him hard in the middle of his back, sending him tumbling to the ground. Next thing he knew, there was a heavy weight pining him to the ground, claws digging into his skin, and teeth snapping just above his face. The wolf’s breath smelled of rotted meat. Castiel reached for his sword, but it had been knocked from his hands.

His mind was strangely blank. The fact that a set of jaws as long as his forearm was about to bury itself into his throat hardly seemed to faze him. All he could really think was _I hope it doesn’t hurt too much._

Then, just as suddenly as it had come, the weight disappeared. Mind still blank, Castiel lay still for a moment, hearing the wolf’s yelps and Dean’s shouts as if from a great distance. When they went silent, he sat up slowly.

Dean was standing over the wolf, his knife and the hand holding it covered in blood. He was breathing heavily, staring at the unmoving mass of fur at his feet.

Castiel got to his feet, swaying a little. “Where are the rest?”

“Gone, I think,” Dean said. As if in confirmation, they heard a howl from far away, as the wolves moved on to find easier prey.

“Good,” Castiel mumbled.

“You’re hurt,” Dean said.

“I’m…” Castiel felt a twinge of pain and looked down. Blood was blossoming from both of his shoulders, where the wolf had dug its claws. “Oh.”

“Let me…” Dean started, taking a step forward.

“No, don’t,” Castiel said, automatically backing away.

“I’m not going to do anything,” Dean said, holding up his hands. “Just let me take a look at it.”

Castiel hesitated, but the pain was getting worse and worse as the shock subsided. Finally, he nodded, and Dean stepped forward.

It stung at first, as Dean tore strips of cloth from Castiel’s torn shirt and used them to clean the blood away from the claw marks. But Dean’s hands were surprisingly gentle, and Castiel found that he was able to relax.

“You’re good at this,” he observed as Dean started binding the wounds.

“You pick up a few tricks when you’re the leader of a rebellion,” Dean said, flashing a quick grin up at Castiel before returning to his work.

“Do you often have to take on the role of a medic?”

“More often than I’d like to,” Dean said. “Last year, Jo got clawed up pretty bad by some guard dogs when she was on a mission. She was practically holding her own intestines in, but I managed to stitch her up, and she pulled through. You’re lucky; these scratches are nothing compared to hers.”

“I suppose I have you to thank for that,” Castiel said quietly, frowning.

Dean was silent. A moment later, he finished binding Castiel’s shoulder, stepping away. “There. You’ll be good as new before you know it.”

“Thank you for…saving my life,” Castiel said uncertainly.

Instead of replying, Dean held out his wrists, his face unreadable. Castiel looked down at them for a moment before understanding. “Oh. Of course.”

He handcuffed Dean without another word, chaining him to the tree just as he had been before. Then, not quite believing what he was doing, he cleaned the blood from the knife that Dean had used to kill the wolf, handing the blade back to Dean.

“Just in case,” Castiel said. Dean looked momentarily confused, but he just nodded. Castiel turned away from him, sitting beside the fire. “Get some rest. Tomorrow will be our last day of travel.”

For the rest of the night, Castiel sat hunched by the fire, staring into the dying coals, and didn’t get another minute of sleep.

* * *

They were slow leaving in the morning. For some reason, it felt wrong just leaving the carcass of the wolf that had attacked them, but Castiel didn’t know what else to do with it. He took his time scattering the ashes of the fire before unchaining the prisoner from the tree. Dean wordlessly handed the knife back to him.

“We’ll reach the castle by nightfall,” Castiel said. “Let’s go.”

Dean was as silent as the day before. Castiel kept glancing at him, wanting to say something, feeling wrong that after what happened in the night they just went back to exactly the way they were before. Then again, Castiel knew he had no right to want conversation with the man he was leading to his death. Somehow, that thought didn’t sit quite right with him anymore. He tried to push the feeling away, but it persisted.

The silence made the walk feel even longer than yesterday. Castiel wondered if Dean still hated him as much as he had that first night. He probably did; more now, even, after seeing what a coward Castiel was.

It was early afternoon when he was struck with a sudden idea. “I could most likely get them to spare your life.”

Dean looked up. “What?”

Castiel nodded quickly. “I have a certain amount of influence, and I know people who have even more. I might be able to convince them not to execute you, as long as you’re securely imprisoned.”

“What use would that be?” Dean said dismissively. “They would still get information about my family, and they would still destroy the rebellion.”

“But you would be alive,” Castiel insisted.

Dean shook his head. “I don’t care about dying. I just want the people I care about to be safe and to carry on what I started.”

“I still don’t understand,” Castiel said, frustrated. “Don’t you want to live?”

“Why do you care if I live, anyway?” Dean asked abruptly.

“I…” Castiel began, then closed his mouth. He started over. “You’re not a bad man, Dean, like I’ve always been led to believe. You saved my life. The least I can do is try to repay that.”

“Hmm,” Dean mumbled, but didn’t give a proper response. Castiel looked at him, but Dean was staring at the ground now. They didn’t speak after that.

* * *

The sun was starting its descent toward the horizon when they stepped out of the trees to see the castle within view in the distance. They both stopped. The late afternoon sunlight seemed to make its pale stones glow, turning it into a beacon on the hilltop that it was built upon. Its banners fluttered gently in the breeze. Even from this far away, Castiel could see the shapes of soldiers moving around on the ramparts.

“There it is,” Castiel said.

“There it is,” Dean repeated grimly.

Castiel started walking again, but Dean didn’t move. “Wait,” he called out. Castiel stopped, turning back.

“What is it?” he asked.

“You said you wanted to repay me for saving your life,” Dean said. Castiel nodded, not liking the direction that this was going. “I know what you can do for me.”

Castiel sighed, shaking his head. “Dean, I can’t—”

“Kill me.”

The words died in Castiel’s throat. “ _What?_ ”

Dean’s jaw was set, his hands clenched into fists. “You have to kill me, Castiel.”

“What are you talking about?” Castiel demanded, stepping toward him. “I’m not going to kill you!”

“You owe me,” Dean said through gritted teeth.

“That’s not what I was talking about!”

“Why not?” Dean snapped. “They’re just going to kill me as soon as you bring me through those gates!”

“I told you, I can get them to spare your life—”

“No!” Dean interrupted. “I can’t let them hurt my family. I can’t risk them finding something out and then it being my fault when…” He shook his head, and Castiel saw a glint of moisture in his eyes.

“You know that I can’t do that,” Castiel said quietly. “ _I_ would be punished.”

“Say that I attacked you then!” Dean exclaimed. “I got ahold of your knife somehow and your only option was to kill me!”

“I’m not going to do that!”

“Please, Cas,” Dean said, and there were definitely tears in his eyes now. “Be brave, for once. Do what you know is right.”

Castiel paused for a long moment. “You love your family enough that you’d be willing to die to them?” he said at last.

“In a heartbeat,” Dean breathed.

Turning, Castiel gazed at the castle. Inside was everything he knew: his garrison, his king, his role as a soldier. He had thought that that was all there was, all that mattered. But now…now he felt like he was missing something, something so huge and important that he couldn’t believe he had missed it before, and he knew he could never go back to the way he used to be. He looked back at Dean, who was begging with his eyes.

Castiel drew his sword slowly. Dean swallowed hard but nodded firmly. As Castiel stepped closer, he closed his eyes, bracing himself.

In one swift motion, Castiel brought his sword down hard, slicing through the chain binding Dean’s wrists together. Dean stumbled backward, his eyes flying open. He stared at the broken chain, then at Castiel.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

Castiel could feel his heart pounding faster than it ever had before. Part of him felt like he should be afraid, but he had never felt more alive. “Setting you free,” he said.

Dean’s mouth hung open. “Wha…”

“On one condition,” Castiel went on.

Dean snapped his mouth shut. “What is it?”

Castiel stepped toward Dean, dropping his sword on the ground. “Take me with you,” he said. “Show me why you’re willing to die for your family. I want to understand.”

Dean’s eyes were wide. “Are you sure? I mean, really sure. You’ll be a traitor and have a price on your head. It’s not easy; there’s always people wanting to kill you and soldiers on your ass and you can’t trust anyone—”

“I’m sure,” Castiel said firmly. “I can trust you, Dean.”

“Then of course.” Dean nodded, and his face broke into a wide smile. “I’ll show you, Cas.”

Not sparing another glance to the castle, they started walking back the way that they had come. Castiel pushed aside thoughts of duty, of accolades and feasts and the only family he had ever really known, instead stepping toward his new life. Behind him, the castle disappeared from view until it was nothing but a memory of pale stone and flags flying in the setting sun.


End file.
